Overnight, Jared Kushner has been transformed from a wealthy and decidedly private individual into the city’s latest media celebrity.

Buying the New York Observer will do that.

Politicians who hadn’t telephoned him in years – since a political scandal sent his dad, real estate mogul Charles, to prison in 2005 on tax evasion, witness tampering and political financing fraud – suddenly started calling the 25-year old NYU graduate student to wish him well.

He’s going to need all the good luck he can get.

The paper is currently said to be losing $2 million a year – down from $4 million to $5 million annually several years ago – and Kushner said he expected the losses to grow larger before they get smaller.

“I’ll underwrite it for as long as it takes,” he said. “I do believe it can be a profitable paper, otherwise, I wouldn’t be interested in being here.”

And, in what has to be music to the ears of Editor-in-Chief Peter Kaplan, who had to endure cutbacks under former owner Arthur Carter, Kushner said he is ready to pump more cash into the editorial side of the operation.

“In order to make the paper profitable, we have to increase the spending on editorial and come up with new and exciting ideas.”

In recent years, many of the talented journalists Kaplan developed migrated to better paying jobs at the New York Times, the New York Post, Condé Nast and elsewhere.

“I believe the days of the New York Observer being a farm system for other publications are over,” Kushner boasts.

For starters, the rookie publisher isn’t short on enthusiasm.

Kushner is said to have paid about $10 million for the 45,000-circulation weekly and had to beat out Robert DeNiro and the actor’s partners from the Tribeca Film Festival, who couldn’t complete a deal with Carter.

Kushner, not suprisingly, won’t confirm the amount he paid. “It’s a private transaction between myself and Mr. Carter.”

That’s a phrase Kushner – so freshly hatched from a life of near anonymity – repeats often, whenever it seems he’s asked about his girlfriend, his father, pending deals or his personal wealth.

For the record, Kushner says dad’s aware of the deal but not involved. His siblings though, are all over the purchase, with older sister Dara, 27, younger sister Nicole, 23 and younger brother Joshua, 21, taking small stakes.

Carter. the founder of the salmon colored weekly, is also keeping a small piece.